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The War of Copper Knives
The War of Copper Knives, also known as the Wachter War, the Wachter-Vallaki Conflict, and the War of the Banner (after its most notable battle), was a military conflict fought between forces loyal to the Burgomaster of Vallaki (ruled by the house of Ionelus) and those loyal to the Boyar of the Wachter Province (ruled by the house of Wachter) from early to late 768 BC. The war was characterized by long periods of tension and uneasy stalemate, punctuated by a series of skirmishes and battles, almost all of which were won by Wachter forces. The most famous of these battles were the Battle of the Banner and the Storming of Vallaki which ended the war. Background Wachter and Vallaki had a number of unresolved territorial disputes leading up to the outbreak of military hostilities. The fall of the house of von Zeklos had left that family's former lands without effective rulership and plagued by undead and other supernatural horrors. In order to ensure both that Vallaki did not expand its territory and to provide some means of resisting the undead, Boyar Ivan Wachter made an alliance with Sentire Heinrych Frauenlob of Western Barovia, granting him the area around the former Zeklos Keep as a new tenancy, now called Raduta. With his designs thwarted, the infirm burgomaster of Vallaki Nicolai Ionelus could only loudly protest. Strahd XI, however, the Count of Barovia, was gone to Immol on a private mission of extreme urgency and would not return for more than a year, leaving Ionelus without any effective means of seeking recourse. Simultaneously, the decline of the house of Wagner had left the areas to the north and west of Lake Zarovich without effective rule, and attacks by werewolves and shadows and other monsters increased. Based on an ancient and long-forgotten genealogical tie with the house of Wagner, Ivan Wachter sent the Wachter Militia to claim and pacify the old Wagner lands, conveniently ignoring the fact that there were yet living Wagners with a better claim in order to give the house of Wachter access to both rich mineral deposits in the surrounding Balinoks and also to the waters of Lake Zarovich. With these acquisitions, the house of Wachter now had the house of Ionelus virtually surrounded on three sides. Meanwhile, Nicolai's infirmity had simultaneously allowed Vallaki's internal politics to become dangerously disordered. Vladimir Ionelus, often called "the General" for his bloodthirstiness and penchant for violence, had become reckless and delusional, seeking openly to push his father from power and rule himself. He heaped abuse upon all those who disagreed with him, including (and most particularly) Gaelia Ionelus-Wachter, his wife and Ivan Wachter's daughter. His sister Nadia Ionelus, whom the peasants called the Black Widow in secret for the large number of dead husbands left behind her, supported Vladimir, but seemed to have no stomach for open violence. Svari Ionelus, their youngest sibling, meanwhile sought to temper his brother's more reckless impulses, but found that it constituted more and more an inescapable distraction from his duties as an Ezrite priest. Affairs came to a head when a group of Vallaki Garda officers, led by Lieutenant Vasile Pavlenco and Corporal Krasimir Svetozar, turned on the insane "General" and attacked him. It was thought that the General had died; it emerged only at the Storming of Vallaki that he had been abducted and imprisoned in the Pit, the legendary dungeon of the Wachter Estate. In return for this act of bravery, Boyar Ivan Wachter rewarded the men with positions in his own Militia. Corporal Svetozar became the officer responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Estate garrison, and began gathering soldiers for a war with Vallaki that all of the Wachter commanders felt was now growing inevitable. The Outbreak of Conflict After the General's disappearance, tensions between the Vallaki Garda and the Wachter Militia ran high. Their patrols often encountered each other at the River Luna, and allegations and insults triggered skirmishes on multiple occasions, not yet open warfare, but both sides acting in the seemingly sure knowledge that it was coming. Both sides gathered their strength and waited for the spark that would light the dry tinder. The war was triggered, however, by a cause entirely external to previous tensions or scheming. A strange storm began to beset Vallaki a few months after the General's disappearance, hailstones flattening crops, the chilling cold killing animals in the fields. When the cold broke, the melting snows and warm temperatures caused grain and meat stores to rot, and Vallaki found itself in the grip of a deepening famine. Some attributed the calamity to the wrath of the legendary Ice Queen, the horrific ghost Jezra Wagner, although no one could be certain. It became immediately obvious that Vallaki was desperate for assistance, and Wachter, still fearing reprisals from Vallaki for the "death" of Vladimir and the seizure of Raduta, refused. Indeed, they went further; the Militia set up checkpoints at the River Luna and began preventing all food from passing from Wachter into Vallaki. Conditions within Vallaki quickly became desperate. Mobs attempted to break into the Citadel to steal the Garda's food stores (without knowing that the Garda's food stores were themselves empty). Any attempts to cross the Luna to forage for food were permitted, but those that crossed were not allowed to return, instead being offered land in the still-wild and unsettled Wachter Province. This led to Vallaki, in turn, closing their river crossings, and it was at one such crossing that the first true battle of the war took place. The Battle of the Banner The Battle of the Banner occurred when Corporal Krasimir Svetozar of the Wachter Militia increased the number of troops garrisoned at the primary Luna crossing by twofold in reaction to Vallaki closing their own side of the bridge. The soldiers arrived in a column led by the banner of Wachter borne by Corporal Svetozar himself (the titular "banner"). The imbalance in forces was a deliberate provocation, and predictably Vallaki responded by sending a force of garda under the command of Corporal Bianca Cardei. The two forces watched each other uneasily until Svetozar began showing barrels of food to the Ionelus defenders, promising them respite from the famine in return for defection. When one Vallaki soldier attempted to cross the bridge, Cardei shot at him and nearly hit Svetozar. A Wachter soldier returned fire, and battle was joined. The Wachter Militia easily pushed Cardei's forces back from the bridge and took Cardei herself prisoner, but a counterattack came from the Citadel led by the legendary Sergeant Natasha Orlov. The Wachter force now found itself driven back onto the bridge itself, and, believing the battle was lost, prepared fo sell themselves dearly. It was only the sudden reappearance of Corporal Svetozar and a well-placed gunshot to the head that killed Orlov and finally ensured the victory for Wachter. The battle left the Vallaki Garda reeling, with one officer dead and two, Decebal Cuza and Bianca Cardei, prisoner in Wachter. In subsequent interrogations both officers confessed to numerous "crimes" (the authenticity of these confessions has never been proven). Cuza was eventually exchanged, for political favors; Cardei later somehow escaped from Wachter, but vanished shortly thereafter without a trace. It was Vallaki's turn to be on the defensive, and numerous Wachter incursions in the aftermath of the battle further damaged their already-tenuous food stores. Vallaki was further harmed by the revelation that an examination of the corpse of Natasha Orlov had confirmed her to be imortij, a mummy, although the proclamations of this fact by Fourth Sect preachers in Vallaki was angrily disputed by the surviving Garda officers. The Stalemate In the months after the Battle, Wachter's officers and commanders debated endlessly the possibility of an attack on Vallaki itself. Some advocated seizing the initiative in light of Vallaki's recent defeat, others pled for caution, suggesting that even if they did overcome the ancient Terg fortress at the heart of the Gray City, that the Count would be most displeased by this interference in the governance of the realm he himself had ordained. Furthermore, Nicolai Ionelus still had Vladmir's "widow", Gaelia, as a hostage. In the meanwhile, the Wachter soldiers continued to keep their riverine posts, intercepting food and other supplies that might be used to support the Garda. Furthermore, the Garda were plagued by a series of high-profile defections, most notably that of Lance Corporal Florica Sima, who went so far as to put on the uniform of the Wachter militia and openly fight against her former colleagues. An abortive attempt by the Vallaki garda to abduct her back to their own side led to the first fatalities of the war since the Battle of the Banner when a small force of Wachter militia managed to repel them. Subsequently, her family and the families of many Wachter sympathizers in Vallaki were evacuated, secretly, to Wachter province, preventing even the possibility of retribution in case of an open invasion. Still, Ivan Wachter hesitated, even as his brother Dimitrijie counseled him that the eye of the Count would not remain long distracted. The Storming of Vallaki The dam burst when news reached Wachter in November of 768 that Gaelia Ionelus-Wachter had died, never fully recovered from the abuse and mistreatment she had suffered at the hands of Vladimir. This was followed in close succession in early December by the death of Nicolai Ionelus himself. Nadia Ionelus now seized power in Vallaki and began preparing for further warfare with Wachter, and Wachter's leaders concluded their only option was to seize the Citadel and remove Nadia Ionelus from power permanently. The leaders of Raduta, previously attempting to stay officially neutral except in defending their own territory, now granted their support to Wachter openly, and green-armored Templars joined the invasion force, even as the Refuge sent its own templars and clerics to the defense. The invasion itself occurred on the night of December 17, 768, as Wachter forces crossed the Luna and began an all-out assault on the gates of Vallaki. Outlanders living in Vallaki joined the Garda in resisting the Militia, but the defense was thrown into disarray when horns blew at the Citadel and the Wachter banner was hoisted over it. In a confused attempt to retreat to the Citadel, Vallaki's defenders found themselves trapped between the invading army and a force that had used it as a distraction to scale the walls and take the Citadel from behind. The Wachter Militia began the work of hunting down hold-outs and resistance, and pacifying the city for their lord's arrival. The Wachters now assembled their forces in the Citadel and prepared for the execution Nadia and also her long-lost sibling Vladimir, retrieved from the Pit. The Decimation Unfortunately, this was the moment in which Strahd XI made his return from his long sojourn in Immol. Infuriated by Ivan Wachter's presumptions over another Burgomaster, he arrived just after Ivan Wachter decapitated the so-called "General," but in time to spare Nadia the headsman's axe. As Von Zarovich forces spread throughout the city, they forced the Wachter garrison to stand down and surrender, disarming them and leaving them helpless. In the courtyard of the Citadel, in full view of the horrified public, Strahd killed Ivan Wachter with his own sword, and an order given by his Tyrant Mages began the systematic slaughter of a large portion of the Wachter Militia. He then ordered Ioan to take his men, to depart Vallaki, and never to usurp his prerogatives again. Ioan, left with no other viable choices, submitted, and Wachter withdrew from the city in shock, horror, and disarray. The corpses of Wachter guardsmen were mounted upon the walls of Vallaki as a reminder to all those who questioned the supremacy of the house of von Zarovich over the burgomasters and boyars of Barovia, and Strahd departed, leaving Svari Ionelus in command of the city. Aftermath In the aftermath of the War, Wachter finds its position diminished and its powers weakened. The loss of a large portion of its forces, although it is left with still the most powerful military force in Barovia outside of the von Zarovich, nevertheless put great strain on a house with a vast territory to rule and administrate. As a result, the recent Invidian war showed the inability of Wachter to keep the borders as well as it once had, a problem that will remain for years to come. Raduta, partly in punishment for the Fourth Sect's alliance with Wachter at the peak of the War, was stripped from the Fourth Sect, its sentire Heinrych Frauenlob recalled to Darkon, and granted to the Second. But memories are long, and the Wachter Militia have not forgotten how close they came to a territorial empire within Barovia, while Vallaki has not forgotten the shame and fury at the massacre of their own forces. The seed for a new conflict lies buried within the resolution of the last one. Only time will tell when and if it will grow.